From: bowman@montana.com   
      
   On Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:06:17 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:   
      
      
   > I find written Dutch 80+% readable, but the spoken is totally   
   > unintelligible. Dutch and Danish are very similar mixtures of German,   
   > English and French, but have completely different sets of phonemes. Each   
   > of them accuses the other language of "it's not really a language, it's   
   > a throat disease".   
      
   I treat written Dutch like misspelled German but spoken is a throat   
   disease for sure.   
      
   > In my vocabulary, Hochdeutsch is the standard ("educated") German.   
   > In the North, there is Plattdytsch and in the South theere is   
   > Schwäbisch. In the Southern dialects, they "swallow" the grammatical   
   > endings, so I learned to just say "dö" instead of der/die/da/den/dem.   
   > Nobody would take me for a native, but they understood me just fine, and   
   > it relieved me of the worry of getting the wrong ending.   
      
   I've noticed all those things we spent hours on in school have been elided   
   to d'.  At some early age, maybe three, I was under the impression that   
   cats were female dogs and cows were female horses so Der Hund and Die   
   Katze made perfect sense. Other stuff not so much. Lee Hollander, who   
   translated a lot of Norse literature, was ridiculed when he used the   
   masculine for the sun and feminine for the moon. No doubt he did it for   
   English speakers who would have ridiculed him if he preserved the original   
   genders. My theory is when you live in northern Europe the sun is a warm   
   nourishing mother and and the moon, at least at this time of year, is a   
   cold, heartless bastard.   
      
   High German sounds a bit judgmental of Low German so I think the preferred   
   term is Standard German now.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German#/media/   
   File:Wirkoennenalles.svg   
      
   Considering Stuttgart has the highest immigrant population in Germany,   
   they may not be able to speak German of any sort. I have no idea how the   
   cities were selected but Missoul'a 'sister city' is Neckargemünd.   
      
   https://artsmissoula.org/celebration/germanfest/   
      
   Lot's of oompah music. I did not inherit that gene.  Lot's of beer. I   
   don't drink. I think I spent under 5 minutes this year before taking a   
   walk around the rest of the city.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)